The Best in Tent Camping

The Best in Tent Camping by Johnny Malloy

Just to clear some things up at the start, author Johnny Malloy uses the term “tent camping” to mean what I call “car camping”, and neither phrase is very good at all. What this is about is when you drive your carfull of camping gear into a well-maintained campground, drive it right up to the place you’re going to set up your tent, a place likely to have an electrical outlet and running water right there, and set up. Nearby, most likely, will be hot showers, real bathrooms, RVs and, even, probably, people watching TV outdoors while their electric bug zappers keep them comfortable.

A lot of years ago I went backpacking with a friend in the Withlacoochee State Forest in Florida. To get to our trail head we had to pass through one of these drive-up camping areas. There was a mix of tents, pop-ups and RVs, a blare of competing TVs and boom boxes, and three guys running a chainsaw to cut up lumber they were using to build furniture.

I have twice mixed car camping and motels to travel from New York to Florida and once from Florida to New England. Car camping was cheaper and more pleasant than motels. Each time I camped on a weekday, so the campgrounds were not crowded.

It was pleasant, but just not what I do when my aim is purely to enjoy the outdoors. Making this kind of camping pleasant is what The Best in Tent Camping Florida is for. It is one of a series of The Best in Tent Camping books Malloy has written and it aims to show you where the best of this kind of camping can be found. Malloy uses a star system to rate each of the 50 places he covers, sort of in a restaurant review method, and to my great joy he includes privacy and quiet in his ratings. If you had any reason to car camp – like maybe on your way from Miami to go backpack in the Rockies or something or you have to visit your mother-in-law in Jacksonville or you are otherwise wandering around Florida and don’t want to stay in a motel or hotel – this is a book to get.

That’s because he tells where the treasures are.

“I came back to the nearly abandoned campground wondering why more people don’t come here. I visit this park on a regular basis. The hilly terrain is pleasantly unique for the state. The rare Torrela tree, along with another rare evergreen – the Florida yew – make this place special…If you like a little human history (There are an abandoned plantation and civil war gun pits) and a lot of nature, complete with a quiet, attractive campground, come to Torreya State Park.” He gave this panhandle park his top rating, five stars, for quietness.

“This campground offers the best of two worlds. It is in a remote section of a scenic national forest but has the amenities of a more developed campground…Once you find Wright lake Campground, you will see why national forest aaicionados come back time and again. It is on a side road off a dead-end road.” Another five star quiet spot.

“Weeks go by and no one camps in the campground. This small park (Dead Lakes Park Campground) – 83 acres – sees its fair share of day visitors. They are mostly locals doing a little fishing in the Dead Lakes. Granted, this isn’t a place to spend two weeks, but the park makes an ideal overnighting place on the way to the Gulf beaches or a place you can have the whole campground to yourself. No hustle and bustle here. None whatsoever.” And it gets five stars for both quiet and privacy.

Not all the reviews are glowing. For example, “…ample reason to give Big Lagoon a try” and “Come by and give it a chance” can almost make you feel sorry for the campgrounds.

Hillsborough River State Park near Tampa is the one campground in the book that I’m familiar with, having car camped there once, hiked its little trails several times and canoes its river many times. And I’d pretty much agree with Malloy’s judgments: only three stars each for beauty, privacy, spaciousness and quiet. I found it crowded and noisy, but take into account meeting another person on a backcountry trail is my idea of meeting too many. It is an urban area campground, so it’s a playground and picnic area on weekends when large family and social groups come in lugging two-man coolers, 40 pounds of charcoal and the ubiquitous boom boxes.

“This is the most remote and rustic campground you will find in this guidebook,” he writes of the Bear Island Campground, which is in the far south of Florida west of Miami. “But that is only fitting, for the Big Cypress National Preserve is a remote and rugged place.”

Indeed. So remote and rugged that this is one of the few campgrounds he gives only two starts to for security. “This place is very remote, but its remoteness is two-sided. Because most people won’t casually venture here, your privacy is virtually guaranteed. The downside, however, is that help, should you require it, could be a long time in coming.”

There’s an interesting part of the last review, the one about the Oscar Sherer State Park campground on the west coast, south of Sarasota. Toward the end of the review he mentions a place I have backpacked in several times, a place with remote enough areas that the rangers insist on knowing where you will be going because, as one explained sternly to us, "It costs an awful lot to send out a helicopter to find you.”

“Myakka River State Park contains more than 28,000 acres of the real Florida,” Malloy writes of the place. “It has unique plant and animal communities too. By the way – the campground at Myakka River is cramped, open and has too many RVs for me.” All that too much stuff is crowded over on one edge of the park, along the river. But away from that is backcountry, with isolated primitive campsites, one a 13 mile walk from the trailhead.

Perhaps at heart Malloy isn’t a car camper, er, tent camper, but really a backpacker. One of his many, many books is titled “Hiking the Florida Trail: 1,100 miles, 78 days and two pair of boots” a thru-hike he made without either a car or a tent.

Backpackin'

Brownkatz & Brownkatz on Backpacking, Hiking and Camping.

The Best in Tent Camping by Johnny Malloy

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